Land Affairs

Land Reform. But for Whom? (2)

Sometimes I find books on land and land reforms - new books - which have an air of another era about them. The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry is such a book. It is not without insights. But its language and concepts feel more like revolutionary literature from the 1970s than like academic analysis from this millennium.

The book’s part one, written by Utsa Patnaik, addresses the theoretical failure in understanding the links between the agenda of finance capital, on the one hand, and the agrarian crisis in developing countries, on the other (p. 9). Agrarian crises is a classic Marxist topic and the term describes how capitalism dispossesses the small-scale producers of their land.

Personally, I find it honorable when scholars are preoccupied with the rural poor - the peasantry as Utsa Patnaik phrases it. And the author has some extremely interesting findings.  For instance, she shows that populations in developing countries have experienced a decline in grain availability. That is extremely worrying.

What bothers me a bit about Utsa Patnaik’s contribution, however, is its tendency to focus on the negative outcomes of development only. The approach appears rather eclectic. For instance, she writes that cereal output per capita fell sharply in China in the period 1990-2003 and that that the food availability for the poorer mass has declined sharply.

Utsa Patnaik does not, however, discuss why her findings differ from most current descriptions of China, according to which living standards are rising and hundreds of millions are being lifted out of poverty. FAO statistics, furthermore, according this chart, shows a rising calories per person intake in China in the same period. Why do Utsa Patnaik’s findings differ from such, more general, analyses? Is it because of her narrow focus on grain production, which seems to exclude other crops? Or is it because of the uneven distribution of wealth in the country? She does not tell us.

Similarly, she has a statistic showing the decline in per day capita intake in a number of African countries from 1979 to 1991. That is the period of structural reform programmes, which endeniably reduced food security for people in a number of countries in sub-Saharan. She does not, however, include the subsequent decades which, again according to the chart based on FAO statistics, show a rising caloies intake in some of the same countries. Why has she chosen one decade and left out others? Such questions are left unanswered.

The second part, written by Sam Moyo, is not much different. It is an analysis of the third wave of land alienation in all the African regions (p. 73), that is, of the current land grabbing phenomenon. This third wave, he writes, follows the first wave colonial era land dispossessions and the second wave domestic capitalist land grabbing in numerous countries, facilitated by the new land reform policies of the 1990s (p. 68). Again, the approach is rather eclectic. For instance, I find it strange that the state nationalization programmes pursued by some governments in the 1970s, which dispossessed quite a few people of their land – Tanzania being one of them as I have described in a previous blog post – are not seen as land alienation.

What really bothers me, however, is Sam Moyo’s description of Zimbabwe’s land reform as a role model for others to follow: The agrarian accumulation model continues to be based on an outward-looking agricultural strategy, except in Zimbabwe, which is veering towards internal markets, food sovereignty and autonomous development (p. 74). He thus completely ignores the hundreds of thousands who lost their jobs in the farming sector, the 1,5 million people - a tenth of the entire Zimbabwean population – who left for South Africa, and the fact that Zimbabwe - once a breadbasket in Southern Africa - today suffers from acute food insecurity, according to this article from the World Food Programme.

I agree that land in Zimbabwe was highly unevenly distributed and that redistribution was needed. However, as the political scientist Max Weber pointed out in his ethics of responsibility, political actions should not only be measured on their intentions. First and foremost, political actions should be measured on their consequences. By most measures, President Mugabe’s reform approach was misconceived and it failed.

Issa Shivji, in the introduction to the book, writes about the latest phase of capitalist accumulation and the choice humankind faces. We have to choose, he writes, between socialism and barbarism. If only things were that simple.

Traditional Authorities: Do they Deliver Justice in Land Disputes?

The District Land and Housing Tribunal in Tanga.

Policy makers in developing countries face difficult choices when it comes to designing court institutions for settling land disputes. On the one hand, the state court systems are often overburdened with cases. They are often also too expensive to access for most citizens, in particular for women. In other words, to increase the number of courts and reducing the fees may not be a real option in cash-strapped countries with poor populations. Different approaches are required. However, the alternatives may be easier to access, but they often have other unintended consequences.

I was reminded about the dilemma when I read the article Government must consult rural women on the Traditional Court Bill, which criticises the South African government’s decision to vest responsibility over land disputes in customary authorities. A similar critique is raised in the book Land, Power and Custom: Controversies Generated by South Africa's Communal Land Rights Act by Aninka Claassens and Ben Cousins. It describes the customary authorities as being patriarchal and criticizes them for drawing on a repertoire of practices that discriminate against women. Another scholar, Richard Crook, based on his research in Ghana, also warns us against the romanticisation of traditional or customary institutions in his conference paper The state and local justice in Ghana: hybridity, legitimacy and popular values.

In Tanzania, the government in the 1999 Village Land Act and the 2002 Courts (Land Disputes Settlements) Act chose a middle way, prescribing the establishment of village land councils made up, not of professionals, but of appointed laymen and women. The acts also recognized the role of traditional authorities in settling land disputes, but prohibited all gender-discriminatory practices. In theory, these laws and regulations are sound and pragmatic. What the authorities do in practice, however, may be a different matter.

Land Administration: the Colonial Legacy



One of the most exciting books I have read in the last year is The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen. On four hundred pages they analyse the German colonisation of the then German South-West Africa, now Namibia. It is a shocking read. The brutality towards the native population was extreme. The land was the prize the Germans wanted. By then, all the big European countries saw Africa as an empty continent with plenty of Lebensraum for entrepreneurial men and women. And Germany, in particular, was overcrowded, it was thought.

The book convincingly analyses how the technologies of the KZ death camps, the racial state and the war of annihilation - the techniques the Europeans came to know from the German expansion in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, which is seen by the authors as the greatest colonial war in history - had been developed and tested in the colonies in Africa decades earlier.

After the German wars in Namibia in the early 1900s only around sixteen thousand out of eighty thousand Herero remained (p. 230). And only thirteen thousand out of around twenty thousand Nama had survived. At the end, from a total of 57 million hectares of land, 2 million were set aside for the natives.

The book about the German genocide in Namibia made me think of Tanzania, which is the country I do most of my research in, in a different way. Until then, naively, I had bought into the story of Tanzania as a largely peaceful country with a largely peaceful history. I do not know where that tale comes from, but it is not true. It never was. Maybe the violence was less ruthless in Tanzania compared to Namibia and the settler colonies Kenya and Zimbabwe, but it was violence none the less.

One of the books about Tanzania’s history I have read subsequently is To Devour the Land of Mkwawa: Colonial Violence and the German-Hehe War in East Africa 1884-1914 by David Pizzo. It explores the German encounters with the strongest political entity in East Africa in the 1890s; the Uhehe. The encounters ended up in a total war. Again, the civilians paid the prize. In their attempts to cut off the support and supplies the population could provide the Hehe Chief, the Germans encamped the civilian population and followed a scorched earth tactics in which everything – villages and crops - was destroyed. The area around the Hehe capital, Kalenga, having been depopulated during the war, became a centre for European settlers. Today, it is known as the Iringa Highlands.

And so a number of rebellions shaped land ownership in Tanzania. In 1888 there was the ‘Arab Revolt’ along the coast. In 1890 the Maasai revolted. In 1905, the Maji Maji Revolt broke out in Southern Tanzania, when the tribes formerly allied with the colonial authorities, rebelled. This time the Wahehe were on the German side. 2-300,000 were killed. The First World War was no less devastating, according to another scholar, Jan-Bart Gewald in his working paper Colonial Warfare: Hehe and World War One, the Wars besides Maji Maji in South-Western Tanzania.

There has been a tendency to describe many of these atrocities as German phenomena. According to David Pizzo, however, that would be a mistake. His argues that the violence is part of colonialism as a system of exploitation. The famous Polish-British author Joseph Conrad were of a similar opinion. Though his Heart of Darkness has been read as a description of the Belgians’ genocidal behaviour in Congo, he describes the Belgian Colonel Kurtz like a European character, not a Belgian one: His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz... (p. 135).

The point is that land and violence in the colonies were narrowly intertwined. You can not understand these countries today without knowing that history. Personally, I keep wondering whether there is some kind of connection between Operation Vijiji – Tanzania’s forced villagisation programme in the 1970s – and these colonial precedents. And I keep wondering how long it will take before the mindset – that people can be moved around at will – disappears.

Decoupled Land Reform Implementation in Tanzania

This week I published an article in the Journal of Development Studies. It analyses the slow and eneven implementation of Tanzania’s of new-wave land reform today, more than ten years after its introduction in 1999. I argue that implementation is characterised by decoupling, involving a lack of coherence and of mechanisms of enforcement. It can be observed at all levels within the land administration structure. If Tanzania is to implement the reform on a larger scale, the country has to put greater emphasis on national initiatives to couple administrative layers. More money alone will not solve the problem.

Because of their novelty, our knowledge about current new-wave land reforms in sub-Saharan Africa has hitherto been limited. In the early 2000s land reforms were underway in more than 20 countries. Decentralisation of responsibility for land management has been an important intention in most reforms. How that spelled out in practice, however, remained unclear. Through implementation analyses conducted in rural areas in mainland Tanzania, the article analyses how a new-wave land reform is being implemented at the local level.

Read the article: Decoupled Implementation of New-Wave Land Reforms: Decentralisation and Local Governance of Land in Tanzania. In
Journal of Development Studies, Volume 48, Issue 2, 2012.



Land Law Reforms as Cover-Ups for Land Grabbing? Impressions from Uganda

Surveying on a shoestring.

Ever since I started writing my PhD on land in Tanzania, I have encountered a particular, cynical interpretation of land affairs in the Sub-Saharan African countries. The new wave of land reforms passed in the last couple of decades (read about some of the reforms here), so the story goes, is a scam. According to some scholars, reform efforts are merely a way for the elites to legalise the land they have grabbed. The article Tanzania: Spreading Power or Spreading Poverty, for instance, refers to the reform as the formalisation of villagers’ dispossession (page 230).

I have always rejected the story as a conspiracy. Primarily because I did not, in Tanzania, find unambiguous evidence that supported it. Sometimes, however, I begin to doubt. It happened to me, again, last week while carrying out research in Uganda.

Uganda got its land reform with the 1998 Land Act. Like most other reforms of the late 1990s and later, it recognises existing rights to land and makes registration of customary rights to land possible. The latter is a new land law feature. Until recently, most countries had two parallel systems for the administration of land. On the one hand, they had a bureaucratic system where the white minorities had lived, typically in the cities and in settler areas. It was modelled on western land administration systems with title deeds and land registers. In other areas, they had ‘customary’ systems, which were a very diverse set of practices to handle land in ‘native’ areas. Typically, rights to land in these areas were not written down; they were witnessed by local leaders and demarcated with natural marks like stones, trees and the like. Often, state authorities did not respect the customary rights. During colonial times, land was regularly expropriated for settler agriculture. After independence, land was often expropriated for ‘development’ purposes, usually without compensation.

It was, therefore, not merely empty words when the new land reforms recognised existing rights to land. It was a signal that people had the right to the land they were living on. In Uganda, the recognition of customary rights in the 1998 Land Act meant that people could now apply for a Certificate of Customary Ownership. Unlike traditional title deeds customary certificates can largely be produced by local level authorities. Unlike the traditional title deeds, which require surveying which is prohibitively expensive for most people, a customary certificate requires a hand-drawn map of the boundaries and the acceptance and signatures of the neighbours. That is, in theory, how it was supposed to be. In practice, however, the situation is very different.

After having visited several districts, it is now clear to me that the certificates of customary ownership do not exist. They were never designed in the ministry of Lands. Subsequently, the Ministry has confirmed this. That is the reason why I start wondering whether the land reform was a scam. How else would you explain that the thing that could be of most use to the majority of poor people in the country – the customary certificates - is still not available 14 years after the passing of the Land Act? And that the government, in the meanwhile, keeps supporting expensive surveying and titling projects in geographically limited areas?

The Peasantry, Politicians and Farming Experts

Currently, while in Uganda, I follow this country’s debates about land and agriculture. This week, there is an excellent opinion piece in the East African, The Peasantry remain poor, while farming experts turn drug dealers.

The author, Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, wonders why it has proved so difficult for Ugandan politicians to solve basic problems like, for instance, providing access to veterinarians and proper extension services, which would improve productivity and well-being tremendously for the majority of people in the rural areas.

I may not share one of Frederick Golooba-Mutebi’s conclusions – that greedy experts who seek well-paid employment elsewhere are to blame than in defunct local governments. We do, after all, live in a capitalist world, like it or not, in which people are free to seek their chances and enhance their incomes. But I do share his bemusement that politicians, who are unwilling or unable to solve these basic problems, engage in lofty schemes promoting fast track modernisation of agriculture: 

...one hears politicians and policy makers who cannot solve already existing small problems talk of how poverty must be fought through grand and complex strategies such as agricultural mechanisation and the elimination of peasant agriculture.

I suspect that this observation goes not only for Uganda, but for quite a few sub-Saharan African countries.Tanzania's version of state-led mechanisation: The power tiller.

Drivers of Land Grabbing and Large-Scale Land Investments

How about a shady contract?

I hate to admit it when I am wrong. But I have to. Some months ago, I wrote a blog post about land investments. Back then, I assumed that serious investors would prefer investments in well-governed countries with strong institutions, also at the local level, that could enforce property rights. I was wrong.

In a recently published Working Paper, What Drives the Global ‘Land Rush, Rabah Arezki, Klaus Deininger and Harris Selod conclude the opposite. And they base their conclusion on empirical research, not on assumptions. Had I been writing about foreign investments in general, I would have been right. In such cases the business climate matters. But when it comes to land, investors seem to prefer weak governance:

...in contrast to what is found for foreign investment more generally, rule of law and good governance have no effect on the number of land-related investment. Moreover, and counter-intuitively, we find that countries where governance of the land sector and tenure security are weak have been most attractive for investors (p. 3).

That does not mean that Sub-Saharan African countries should stop improving local governance of land. On the contrary. The authors demonstrate that if positive outcomes are to be produced, investors should fulfil specific requirements formulated by the state. In Peru, for instance, transparent auctions of large tracts of land, subsequently, brought large investments in horticulture and created many jobs.

Giving away land too cheaply or for free, on the other hand, as happens many places in Sub-Saharan Africa, is unlikely to bring any benefits to the local communities or to society at large. That was, by the way, also the conclusion of another report, What is in the Contract, published by Lorenzo Cotula earlier this year.

The problem, of course, is that countries with weak governance structures are unlikely to make such requirements and enforce them. And that the investors do not seem to care.

NB:
I am not sure that Tanzania should be categorised as a country with weak governance institutions. On the one hand, the Tanzania Investment Centre has complained that land laws are too strict, making it difficult to attract investors. On the other hand, when you read reports like Accumulation by Land Dispossession and Labour Devaluation in Tanzania from HAKIARDHI and Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa – Tanzania Country Report from the Oakland Institute, you get the impression that the country is an all-you-can-eat buffet for investors.

Small vs. Large-Scale Farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. A Verdict

Sufficiently efficient?

An implicit, but usually unstated, assumption of the current critique of new wave of land grabbing in Sub-Saharan is that small scale farming is socially more just and economically more efficient than large-scale farming. Subsequently even legal large scale land transactions are denounced as illegitimate land grabbing.

Large-scale farming, on the other hand, is preferred by many colonial and post-colonial governments alike, eager to attract investments. They believe that large-scale farming, often under the banner of ‘scientific agriculture’, is the only real shortcut to improving agriculture in their countries (see for instance  James Scott’s Seeing like State about the failures of the Ujamaa reforms and large-scale farming in Tanzania).

I have just read the Working Paper Experiences of Plantation and Large-Scale Farming in 20th Century Africa, which seeks to pass a verdict in the heated debate. Through a careful review of existing literature on large-scale farming and plantation farming from the first economic theories in the late 18th century up to scientific studies of the present the author, Peter Gibbon, concludes that both positions may be right. Previously, in the last half of the 20th century, scholars regarded small scale farmers as superior. That may be true any more, he writes, because of a combination of policy interventions and market developments:

The albeit unevenly rising productivity of LSF food and tobacco production in the settler economies from ca. 1960…relates to public interventions in the areas of credit, input supply and especially research and extension. These investments were racially skewed and costly – which in turn limited their lifespan. The high productivity characterizing LSF (Large-scale farming, ed.) production of higher value crops from the 1980s onward, in contrast, seems to have related to the advent of a new generation of investors and the establishment of new, relatively short global value chains linked to dynamic changes in demand in retail markets.

The lesson, in other words, is that adept policy makers can increase the productivity of large-scale farming. Policy makers can also influence the creation of jobs and the quality of jobs:
In short, productivity, employment generation and employment quality can all be subjected
to modification by policy – policies to support capital intensification, policies to promote farming of more labour intensive crops and policies of labour protection.

Peter Gibbon thus identifies ways to increase the benefits from large-scale farming. But he has not analysed whether similar interventions could enhance the productivity and wellbeing of small-scale farmers, who make up the majority of people in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is a shame. More attention should be devoted to supporting the activities of small-scale farmers. Not because they are more efficient, but because it will contribute to a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Corruption or Trust. Land Administrations in East Africa

How about a little survey?

I am currently in Uganda, working on a report about land. I have met quite a few people working within the land sector here - public officials, scholars and donors alike - who complain about people’s ignorance and lack of trust in the government and in public authorities. The lack of trust, they say, is the reason why people at the local level often shun land surveyors and fight titling, which they see as a government scheme to take land. These people, so the argument goes, fight ‘development’. Interestingly, I have encountered the same complaints from land officials in Tanzania.

Now, today, I read an article in the Ugandan Daily Monitor, that the Ugandan Ministry of Lands is perceived as one of the most corrupt institutions in East Africa. The funny thing is that the same goes for the land institutions in Tanzania. Every year, when Transparency International publishes its corruption index for Tanzania, the land administration institutions top the list as some of the most corrupt.

That makes me wonder whether ‘lack of trust’ is the right way to phrase the problem. I tend to see the people’s behaviour, when they shun land officials and land projects, as perfectly rational. The real problem, then, is corruption. Corruption, after all, undermines trust.

A Crash Course in Tanzanian Politics, Please!

Some days, I find reports on my desk which are so thick that I’m about to give up before opening them. In particular, scholars and activists working within the land grab business tend to produce this type of reports. It is as if they believe that the multitude of words, the length of the list of abbreviations, and the sheer number of pages can transmit the sufferings experienced by the local communities, whose land has been illegally acquired by investors or expropriated by the state.

The Tanzanian policy analyst, Chambi Chachage, has produced a couple of this kind of reports. I have had them on my desk for quite a while, wondering if I would ever get to read them. Over the last couple of weeks I did. It turned out to be rewarding and thought provoking reading.

Chachage sets himself the huge task of investigating what has happened to the state farms when privatisation of state assets started in Tanzania in the 1990s. In the report The State of the then NAFCO, NARCO and Absentee Landlords’ Farms/Ranches in Tanzania, co-authored by Richard Mbunda, he provides an overview of the fate of 34  NAFCO (National Agriculture and Food Corporation) farms and 13 NARCO (the National Ranching Corporation) farms, covering almost 550,000 hectares. The other report, Land Acquisition and Accumulation in Tanzania. The Case of Morogoro, Iringa and Pwani Regions, is an in-depth study of farms in selected districts.

The state farms were established in the 1960s and 1970s on land expropriated from large-scale settlers and small-scale farmers and pastoralists alike. Their establishment was part of an attempt to promote state-driven development of the country under the banner of African socialism.

Economically, the NAFCO farms never became viable. No wonder, then, that they were on the list of businesses to get privatised when the era of socialism was over. NARCO, on the other hand, still exists. That, however, has not prevented a number of its farms from being sold also. The outcome is a mixed picture of farms being kept by state authorities and farms sold or leased to private investors.

Some of the investors are foreigners, but land has also been acquired by public-private partnerships involving the Tanzanian state or by Tanzanian investors. One of the former state farms mentioned in Chachage’s reports is Mzeri, which is situated in one of Handeni Districts where I carried out much of my research. There, I was told, the local MP and a former Tanzanian prime minister have acquired large tracts of land.

When reading about these deals I understand Chachage’s indignation. The privatisation path chosen by the decision makers rarely benefits the local communities, whose land was expropriated in the first place. Often people, who have moved into land left vacant by ineffective state farms, are expelled a second time when land is privatised.

Chachage blames the World Bank and other foreign actors for propagating these privatisation policies and rightly so. After having finished reading his reports, however, I am left with a feeling that there is more to it than that. Privatisations can be carried out in different ways. I have the feeling that Tanzanian decision makers have a decisive say over how it is being carried out in Tanzania. Land could, as described by Chachage, be given back to the communities. That rarely happens. The Tanzanian decision makers choose to sell the former state farms to investors. When President Kikwete met local protests in an area which had been privatised he responded: I cannot repossess the farms and give them to you. They have already been divested... Let us stop lamenting and give the investors time to revamp wheat production. You had the opportunity when the farms were still government-owned but you failed to sustain them (Kikwete in Daily News 18 September 2008 according to Chachage).

The debate makes me realise that there is much I do not understand about Tanzanian politics. I do not understand why people keep electing representatives who seem disinterested in safeguarding ordinary people’s rights. Is it because their policies are thought to bring growth and prosperity and benefit the public in the future, as the quote by Kikwete suggests?

There may be good reasons why these policies are pursued. There may also be good reasons for why people keep electing the same representatives. I would be happy to learn more about them.

Land Policies – do they Matter?

The fuss about land grabbing in Sub-Saharan Africa is understandable. A comparison has shown that the amount of land being transferred is often smaller than reported in the media. Still, the scale of large-scale land acquisitions is breathtaking. Even the liberal magazine the Economist indicates that the time may be up for more regulation. In the article When others are grabbing your land it describes how land deals rarely deliver the benefits they promised.

But whereas activists are right in ringing the alarm bell, the solutions they suggest may not solve the problem. It became clear to me during the conference Africa’s resources – Lions on the move in Copenhagen, earlier this month. There, during his presentation, Lorenzo Cotula, author of the report Land Deals in Africa: What is in the Contracts?, made it clear, that despite the land policy reforms which have been carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa the last couple of decades, the issue of compensation has not been seriously addressed: '…even in those countries where legislation is perceived to be particularly progressive, safeguards within the context of land takings may be weak. And not just because land deals are new – takings have been going on for many years for mining, petroleum, roads, etc.'

Lorenzo Cotula points to a more general problem of loopholes in the legal frameworks in many countries. Therefore, an outright ban on large-scale land transactions, as has been proposed by some activists, is unlikely to solve the problem. It would not address the other types of expropriations which are taking place and it would probably be difficult to enforce.

Policies which ensure compensation in case of expropriation, on the other hand, would be a step forward in protecting people’s rights to land. Ceilings on land purchases and land ownership may also be effective measures. In Brasil, large-scale foreign land acquisitions stalled once such a measure was implemented, according to a recent investment report. I would argue that the ceiling should be for foreign and domestic investors alike. To the locals it does not matter whether land is being bought by a foreign or a domestic investor. The damage they do is the same.

Better land policies may not in themselves solve the problem. As pointed out in a comment to a previous blog post, the question of access to justice and the enforcement of decisions remain crucial. But better land policies would provide a good point of departure.

Through Investors' Eyes. Land Acquisitions Revisited

A good investment?

A change of perspective on land acquisitions in developing countries can be healthy. I was exposed to the views of a potential investor recently, which made me adjust my way of thinking. Maybe the interests of investors may not be that different from the populations in developing countries? Investors – the serious ones – are also interested in strong, accountable institutions which can provide secure and stable access to land.

The one making me think about land acquisitions anew was the fiancé of a female friend of mine; a professional investor. A couple of weeks ago I had shared a newspaper article on my Facebook wall about an African continent on its way to becoming an economic super power with high economic growth rates.

The fiancé-cum-investor let me know, through his girlfriend, that I should not invest in Africa. The risk of loosing money there was too high. But I was also told that if I really wanted to pursue the idea of investing in Africa he knew of a company in Congo, a palm oil producer, with an option on 100,000 ha of arable land, which was worth considering. The company promised high average returns. High returns, if I understand investors correctly, can compensate for running big risks.

I was a bit baffled by his suggestion. First of all, I do not have the money to invest. And even if I had had the money, I would not invest in a palm oil producer in Congo. I am not really the gambling type of guy. Still, I got inspired by the suggestion. It made me wonder how investors think.

If I were an investor, I would find an investment in a company in Congo with an option on 100,000 ha of arable land extremely risky. Maybe the number of land acquisitions in Sub-Saharan Africa is on the increase. But so is the number of deals being cancelled. In Tanzania, a story about South Koreans investing in large-scale rice farming keeps circulating. But if there ever was a deal, it has also been cancelled several times (read about it here). In 2009, a sale of land in Madagascar fuelled a rebellion against the incumbent government. That deal was also cancelled (read about it here). Vast tracts of land in Sub-Saharan Africa are transferred to investors without ever being utilized, often because the projects stall after encountering local resistance.

Add to that the potential ethical aspect, which also plays a role for modern investors. What will happen to the ones living on those thousands of ha, once the palm oil producer decides to expand its production? A report by the World Bank from 2010 showed that investments in countries with weak laws and weak institutions – and I imagine civil war-torn Congo is such a country – are unlikely to benefit people at the local level.

A solution to the ethical problem could be to prohibit foreign land acquisitions completely. Some civil-society groups have suggested this recently (read about it here). I do not believe, however, that it will solve the problem for the local poor since it does not address the problem of large-scale domestic land acquisitions, which can be equally damaging. It could also make it more difficult to set up industries, businesses, etc. in these countries in general, which would be damaging to the economy.

I find the investor perspective intriguing. Because it makes it clear how difficult it is for businesses, foreign and domestic businesses alike, to operate in many African countries. Last week, Tanzania’s President Kikwete tried to address the problem by assuring investors that the country would maintain its investor-friendly policies (read the article in the Citizen here). But in the case of Tanzania, I believe that the president may be part of the problem. The large-scale land acquisitions in Tanzania have often been made possible by the government’s expropriations of land. An investor would wonder whether a future Tanzanian president could expropriate his land holdings as easily as land has been expropriated in the past. Stephen Johnston from the Canadian fund manager Agcapita, in an article in the Wealth Report 2011, produced by Knight Frank and Citi Bank, recently stated that 'I don’t think you can make a long-term case for investing in developing countries. Poor people vote and politicians listen. At some point, somebody will get elected who will nationalize farmland’. According to the same article, investors see most African countries as ‘a potential Zimbabwe’. The lack of stable institutions and checks and balances, in other words, reduces tenure security, not only for the poor, but for all.

A different way of addressing insecure land rights would be to strengthen the capacity of the local authorities and citizens and increase their role when land deals are made. Maybe the parliaments should also be given a larger role in controlling the deals. The power of the executive should be diminished correspondingly, and the huge, surreal, transfers of land should be stopped (maybe ceilings on land purchases would work?). Interestingly, the interests of serious investors, in strong institutions and in a system with more checks and balances, may not be very different from the interests of ordinary Africans.

Land and Sexual Violence (4). A Report from Cote d’Ivoire...

People on the run from the severe post-election fighting. March 2011. © Alexis Adélé/IRIN.

This week, a report appeared about the use of sexual violence as part of the post-election conflict in Cote d’Ivoire. Again, there seems to be some kind of relationship between political conflict, land, and rape as a weapon of war.

In Cote d’Ivoire, the atrocities started in November 2010 when the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after having lost the national elections (read about the conflict here). Soon, what started off as a dispute over the election outcome activated ethnic and religious cleavages.

According to the report from the UN news agency, IRIN, there is a link between ethnicity, land and sexual violence:
Most refugees are reporting that the violence is ethnically and politically driven, say NGOs and rights groups. The political fault-lines in this region are largely along ethnic and religious grounds. Violence in the west has also been linked to longstanding clashes over land that have pitted local communities against outsiders. Waines, just back from talking to refugees in Nimba Country, said: “There is a large ethnic dynamic to this violence - targeted ethnic killings and attacks are driving the dynamic.”

The article only reports that these crimes have taken place. Unfortunately, it does not provide much insight into the behind lying ethnic conflicts and exactly how they relate to land issues.

Agricultural Productivity a Threat to Women’s Land Rights

A threat to productivity?

Recently, I realized that there may be a contradiction between governments’ emphasis on the productive use of land and most people’s secure rights to land in developing countries. In particular women’s access to land is at risk. Again, it was the experiences from the Zimbabwean land reform, which made things clear to me.

It is an established truth that the focus on productivity is a threat to the tenure security of pastoralists. Read Once Intrepid Warriors by Dorothy L. Hodgson and you’ll come across several stories, both from before and after independence, about Tanzanian authorities alienating Maasai land in order to give it to more productive farmers. Ironically, the expected improved productivity did often not materialize. If you read the final version of the Tanzanian governments plan for the implementation of the 1999 land laws, SPILL, from 2005, you will find a similar disregard of pastoralist productivity.

In her book, Gender and Land Reform, Allison Goebel concludes that the same focus on productivity may threaten women’s land rights. In her analysis of the experiences from Zimbabwe’s land reforms she starts off with a very positive story from the early 1980s. Back then, the Zimbabwean government’s land reform policies were still aiming at redistributing land to the landless and thus promoting social justice. Women were also eligible for resettlement land, in particular if they were single women. Over the years, however, the government increasingly shifted its focus. Increasingly, it emphasized that settlers should be able to make productive use of the land. First, training courses were made a prerequisite for being resettled on vacant land. Later, criteria became even stricter and applicants should own a schotchcart (a wooden, wheeled cart) and a plough (p. 24). Obviously, it was much harder for women to meet these requirements. Simultaneously, large tracts of land were given to the new black elite for large-scale farming.

I do understand politicians’ focus on economic growth. It is, after all, the only way for their countries to escape aid-dependency. Still, it triggers me that there is so much talk about productivity and so little debate about how to distribute land and resources. Goebel’s analysis makes it clear that the increased focus on productivity may threaten women’s access to land. Just as it may threaten a lot of other groups’ rights to land.

Zimbabwe’s land reform. Myths and Surprising Realities...

Land affairs can be intriguingly complicated. Land reform debates, on the other hand, are often remarkably predictable. Once you know a person’s view on formal titling, you know the rest. Sometimes, however, a new article or a new book appears that differs. Based on empirical research it challenges your preconceived opinions. It happened to me this week when I got hands on the book Zimbabwe’s Land Reform, Myths and Realities.

First, whereas most writings about land reform are based on predictions about reform outcomes, this book analyses a land reform post facto. Second, the book does not aim at debating pros and cons of titling. Instead, it asks which effects the Zimbabwean land reform has had on a number of parameters. Finally, the findings and the entire approach do not fit well with the accounts we receive in Europe about the Zimbabwe’s reform.

Zimbabwe’s land reform is in many ways an unusual reform. Whereas most current land reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa focus on streamlining land governance, for instance through decentralisation, facilitation of land markets and titling, the explicit aim of the Zimbabwean reform is to redistribute land to the poorer segments of the population (for an overview of different types of land reforms, see chapter 2 in Evolving Land Rights, Policy and Tenure in Africa). Land ownership in the country was highly uneven distributed prior to reform. 4500, mostly white, commercial large-scale farmers owning the major part of the productive land. Something had to happen.

Whereas we do know that some of the confiscated land was distributed to Mugabe’s cronies, it is often overlooked that around one million Zimbabweans, many of them dirt-poor, also settled on and farmed the land. Almost 50% of the resettled households are doing pretty well, producing a surplus they can invest in the future. So the book’s case studies show. There are several reasons why we have not heard about these more positive reform outcomes. A major explanation is the fact that the production parameters applied from observers outside the country were those of the past; large-scale production of wheat and tobacco. But the current small-scale farmers have diversified and the production of for instance small grains, which fulfil household needs, has soared.

That is all very surprising to me. It is likely to be troubling news to others. I wonder what all those Sub-Saharan African governments, who repeatedly claim that large-scale farming is the only way to economic growth, will do. And how will the population in for instance Kenya, with its highly skewed distribution of land, react when they learn about the potential advantages of small-scale farming?

Still I feel a bit uneasy about the book. It has to do with the questions the authors do not really answer. Could all the sufferings in Zimbabwe have been avoided if the government had been more proactive at an earlier stage? What happened to the 150000 farm workers (and their families, in total around one million people were affected) who lost their jobs? Does it make sense, analytically, to separate land redistribution from the Mugabe regime’s violent excesses? Can it, in other words, be justified that the authors focus on only one aspect of the last decade’s development, the land reform, while they largely ignore that the country is falling apart?

Land and sexual violence (2)

My last blog post was about the use of rape and sexual violence in major conflicts. During a meeting with some colleagues a couple of days ago, I realised that sexual violence may also be part of small-scale, everyday conflicts with neighbours, kins and family members. At the meeting I was asked if we know anything about it. I did not. So far, I have not come across any literature which deals with the topic.

I do know that violent marriages can be quite common in rural areas. In the book ‘Women Forget that Men are the Masters’ Margrete Silberschmidt describes how social change in a district in Kenya challenges men’s traditional identities. Often, women are better at small-scale business and managing the fields. Still many men, though they are loosing their traditional role as breadwinners, cling on to the traditional gender relations: ‘Regardless of the socio-economic circumstances in which they find themselves, men are constantly preoccupied with the fact that they are men, and that this condition differentiates them radically from women’ (Silberschmidt p. 17).  Sex and violence, then, may become parts of some men’s strategies to assert themselves and their masculinity.

Thinking back to my fieldwork, I remember the story of a woman, whose husband had died. Soon, the husband’s brother moved in and took over the role as the head of the family. But the two did not get on well, and the woman asked him to leave. The man turned violent, however, and, in the end, she was the one who had to flee the house and the land with her kids. I do not know whether sexual violence was a part of it. It was not my research topic and I did not inquire into it. I wish I had.

This brings me back to the fact, that I do not think that land and sexual violence at the local, everyday level has been thoroughly researched. Anybody out there who knows more about it?

Land and sexual violence

Survivors of sexual violence at the Hospital of Panzi, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo from UN Multimedia.

An article in this week’s Economist, War’s overlooked victims, is about the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Most often women are targeted.

From newspaper reports I had noticed current conflicts’ large numbers of rapes during conflicts. Repeatedly, we read stories about rapes in the ongoing civil war in Congo. There were reports about sexual violence during the 2007-2008 political crisis in Kenya (read here). In Bosnia in the 1990s, rape was also widespread. I thought it was a new trend. It turns out, however, that it is not.

What is new is the realisation that rape is often used systematically as a weapon of war. Only in 2008 was it officially acknowledged as such by the UN Security Council.

Often, so it seems, the use of sexual violence during conflicts is related to land. The logic behind is abhorrent. Men are mobile. Sometimes they are engaged in militia activities themselves, sometimes they work in the cities. When conflicts break out, which involve different ethnic groups and control over land, women are easy targets. By raping women, militias can force them and their families to flee an area. According to a research paper by Elisabeth Wood, an American professor at Yale University, a UN Commission noticed the connection between land and sexual violence after the wars in the former Yugoslavia:

In both custodial and non-custodial settings, many victims report that the alleged perpetrators state that they were ordered to rape and sexually assault the victims, or that they were doing it so that the victims and their families would never want to return to the area. Also, every reported case occurred in conjunction with an effort to displace the civilian population of a targeted ethnic group from a given region…

Subsequently, the perpetrators can distribute the land among to members of their own ethnic grouping. Shocking.

An unhappy Mariage? Women and formalised land ownership

This Tanzanian woman once lost her land in a divorce. Now she is happy that she has a title on her land.

The debate about how to protect vulnerable groups in land reform processes is continuing. In a previous blog post I described the effect of putting the names of women on title deeds in Tanzania. It was my impression that it made a big difference for women to know that they, in a written document, figured as the owners of the plots they use.

Now, from a friend, I have received an example of what happens when women’s names are not written. It does not look good. The findings in The Impact of National Land Policy and Land Reform on Women in Uganda are based on a small survey conducted by Uganda Land Alliance and the international NGO COHRE.

Uganda got its land law reform with the 1998 Land Act. Though women activists had campaigned for spouses’ automatic co-ownership of land the final law did not open up for this option. In the book No Shortcuts to Power Sheila Kawamara-Mishambi and Irene Ovonji-Odida describe how the president deleted the article empowering women, after it had been passed by parliament, because he was afraid that women would accumulate land through serial monogamy. Today, according to the survey from Uganda Land Alliance and COHRE, only 8% of married women in Uganda report that they own land.

Instead, lawmakers have sought to secure women’s rights to land by emphasising their rights according to other laws. The problem with this approach is that it presumes that women know their rights, and know how to enforce them. However, the study shows that women, especially in rural areas, do not know about their rights. Subsequently, discriminatory customary practices persist.

Habari Nzuri ! Progress in the Fight against Corruption in Kenya

It is difficult to understand a country from the outside. This is not least true in African countries (I apologise for this generalisation) where political life is usually so rife with rumours, speculations, and conspiracy theories, that it may even be difficult to know what is going on when you are in the country.

Still, it appears to me that there is something encouraging going on in Kenya at the moment. The last couple of weeks I have read a number of stories in the press about corruption cases against high-ranking politicians. All are being investigated and many are related to land:

28 October the Daily Nation wrote that Nairobi Mayor Leaves Office Over Corruption Charges, related to the public purchase of cemetery land.

27 October you could read an article, also in the Daily Nation, announcing that Foreign Affairs minister Moses Wetang'ula had been forced to step aside because of involvement in irregular purchases or sales of embassies in Japan, Nigeria, Belgium, and Pakistan.

20 October Business Daily announced that Higher Education Minister William Ruto had been suspended by President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga. The minister, allegedly, has received money to facilitate the sale of ungazetted forest land to Kenya Pipeline Company.

According to the Director of Kenya's Anti-Corruption Commission, Prof Lumumba, more ministers are under scrutiny. There seems to be a pattern. The question is, of course, which kind of pattern. I do not know much about Kenyan politics. I do know, however, that the latter accused, William Ruto, made himself deeply unpopular among his government colleagues by campaigning for a no to the new constitution earlier this year. Could charges be politically motivated and not raised as a consequence of the fight against corruption? I do not know.

Still, I find any prosecution better than no persecution. Kenya, after all, slid further down in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International http://www.transparency.org/, from number 146 in 2009 to number 159 in the world in 2010.

Land Rights Confusions. Reflections after a Conference with Hernando de Soto

Last week I attended a conference with Hernando de Soto in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The theme of the conference was ‘Property Rights and Poverty’. A more correct theme would have been ‘Property Rights and Economic Growth’ because that was what de Soto was talking about and the issue which was debated afterwards; is there a causal link between establishing a formal system for titling and economic growth? Yes, said de Soto, an economist and renowned author of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. No, said a lot of scholars who have been researching land affairs on the ground in Africa. The strong and incompatible positions made me wonder whether these people were talking about the same issue. I think not.

De Soto’s main argument is that a formal system for registering property rights and issuing titles in Europe and in USA has been the prerequisite for the widespread use of land and property as collateral for loans. If people in developing countries get the same chance, they can start using the assets they actually possess – a piece of land, a cow, or a shack – as collateral, and get money for investments in income-generating activities. This, he says, will enhance economic growth in developing countries.

But the system does not work in Sub-Saharan Africa, many land scholars say. Usually they refer to Kenya, which started titling decades ago and where the system has not produced benefits for the poor majority. Banks there have been reluctant to accept land as collateral because they found it hard to take the land and resell it in case money was not paid back for the loan. Furthermore, they explain, the process of titling often causes land-grabbing on the local level because the value of land is expected to rise. Finally, if title registers do not get maintained they will become worthless and may even create more – rather than less – tenure insecurity. In the end, therefore, titling may be a risk rather than an opportunity for the poor. Read more about the Kenyan experiences here.

When listening to the debate, I had this feeling that they were not really talking together. It was, to be honest, a bit confusing. After a while, however, a governance consultant, Jens Kovsted, raised the very relevant question whether formal property rights really enhance economic growth or whether the opposite was true – that economic growth promotes the establishment of formalised property rights? That made things clearer to me. Dichotomies like Kovsted’s sometimes do. But they may be deceitful.

Maybe we should see it as a two-way process? Personally, I find it hard to believe that a formal system for registering rights evolves out of nowhere, due to economic growth, unless somebody decides to work on establishing it. De Soto, on the other hand, could learn that the correlation between formal property rights and economic growth, which may be observable in Europe and USA in the time span of centuries, is not easily translated into short-term land policy interventions in developing countries. It may be more complex than that.

Photo of de Soto is from ILD.

The land question in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is not one land question in Sub-Saharan Africa! That is an established truth among land rights scholars. They regularly state it to challenge one-size-fits-all solutions within the land sector; universal titling, nationalisations, privatisations, collectivisations, etc. Problems related to land, they argue, are diverse and context specific. What is the right solution in one country at a certain time may be fatal in another.

Similarly, I have regularly been told that, when it comes to land, Tanzania is not Kenya. The ones telling me so are Tanzanians, who wish to underline the difference between the two countries when it comes to inequality. In Kenya there is a conspicuous correlation between possession of political power and land ownership. The leading politicians are also among the biggest land owners in the country.

Tanzania is different, I am told. Primarily because the first President, Julius Nyerere, restricted politicians’ and ministers’ involvement in business. But the more I learn about recent developments in the Tanzania, the more I am convinced that the story of Tanzanian equality has become a myth. This week the Citizen brought an article about villagers in Mvomero District who complain about Frederick Sumaye, Prime Minister from 1995 - 2005, who owns a large piece of land in their area.

During my research in two districts I have come across another former Prime Minister owning large tracts of land, and I have also heard of several MPs and a former President owning land on a large scale. I have come across these findings by pure coincidence; because it is not my field of study, I have not even been looking for this kind of large scale land ownership.

Of course Tanzania is different from Kenya. But when it comes to the convergence between political power and land ownership the difference may be smaller than what is commonly believed.

Sikujua (I didn’t know)

Bare land outside Arusha.

The first times I heard about people buying land illegally in my case villages in Tanzania, I imagined shady businessmen and corrupt public officials and politicians looking for a quick win. But I have come to realise that a lot of middle- and upper class Tanzanians take part in the scramble for land. I have had research assistants - young, smart, city-born university students - talking about buying land. And I have met people working in ministries, private companies, and NGOs, owning fields and forests. I am always surprised by this interest in rural areas; why?

In Denmark you may find people dreaming of owning a house and living a quiet life on the country side. But unless they are hunters, farmers, or born on the country side themselves, no one talks of owning land just for the sake of it.

Yesterday, having given a lift to a friend, who then asked me to stop on the way to pick up two sacks of maize from her farm, I realised that some people actually acquire land in order to farm it and supplement low salaries with cheap food. There is probably also a great deal of insurance-thinking behind the land acquisitions; after having experienced several economic downturns, people in developing countries see land as a safe haven for the next time the times are changing. In his fantastic book Expectations of Modernity James Ferguson describes how those families in Zambia’s crisis-hit mining towns who did reasonably well during the economic downturn of the 1970ies, were the ones with good connections to their rural relatives, who, then, provided access to land and income when jobs in the mining sector disappeared. Finally, some buy land for investment purposes, either to produce cash crops or because they expect that prices on land will continue to rise in the future.

But town-dwellers are not always good farmers. Outside of Arusha, to the south towards Simanjiro, there is an area which the locals call Sikujua, which, in English, means I didn’t know. This area, so the story goes, has been bought by wealthy people from Arusha as an investment. They planned to produce turn the area into a farming area from which they could annually harvest maize and other cash crops. But they never managed to harvest anything; it practically never rains in the area and, therefore, nothing grows. They had bought the land not knowing that it was useless for farming. Sikujua; I didn’t know.

Law and justice; the Tanzanian Land Court System

 
A Tanzanian Primary Court.

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a judge in Handeni, where I am currently doing my fieldwork. We talked about the special Tanzanian court system which has been set up to settle land conflicts. The conflicts over land here are aplenty. Before the land reform and the passing of the Land Courts Act in 2002 the judiciary was incapable of dealing with the large number of cases and therefore courts were slow and hardly accessible to people.

I told him about a discussion I had had with another judge recently, who had complained about the land courts; he found that the lower level institutions (on village, ward and district level), with their lay judges, were unable to deliver real justice. The Handeni judge did not agree. He said that justice can be brought by law, but that law does not always bring justice.

And maybe he is right. I have been researching on these land court institutions and I found that they are being used and that they are respected in the villages. The village land councils are busy and there are also plenty of appeals to the next levels. When I look into court files from before the 2002 reform, on the other hand, I hardly find any land cases. Villagers back then could not or would not use the formal system.

From a legal point of view the rulings of these village councils and ward tribunals are far from perfect. But at least they are accessible to people. Furthermore, according to the Handeni judge, they often make decisions which are more just than are the verdicts passed by ordinary courts. In ordinary courts the one with the biggest wallet and the best lawyer often wins the case. The village land councils, for all their faults, usually do their best to make the right decisions. Maybe that is not that bad after all.

Private Property Rights; Theory and Reality

One of the past week’s most interesting land rights news came from Denmark, my home country, where the newly appointed Minister for Development Cooperation, Soeren Pind, a known liberal, proclaimed that he would make respect for private property rights a cornerstone of Denmark’s development assistance.

In an interview in a Danish daily, Information, he explained that if a country is not interested in improving private property rights he sees no point in supporting it. Private property rights, he said, are a prerequisite for creating economic growth to the benefit of the poor.

The Minister’s announcement will without any doubt provoke left leaning NGO representatives and politicians. It will also raise protests from the group of land rights scholars who repeatedly have pointed out that the claim that formalisation (official recognition and registration of land rights) leads to economic growth and poverty alleviation is unsubstantiated.

Personally I look forward to follow the minister’s encounters with the reality in developing countries. Will the fact that all land in a country like Tanzania is owned by the President mean that Denmark, for decades a major donor in the country, pulls out? Or will the various Rights of Occupancy, which people can acquire in Tanzania, be good enough for the Minister? And I can not wait to hear how Tanzanian politicians on one hand will proclaim that Tanzania respects private property and, on the other, justify the country’s extensive use of land expropriations for private investments.

In Denmark Soeren Pind has been hailed for his courage to set a new agenda for Danish development assistance. The crucial question now is how his policies will be implemented in Denmark’s Programme Countries (who receive the bulk of Danish development assistance) and in the multilateral organisations it supports.

(Photo from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark)

When Maasai women get angry they take the law into their own hands

They look peaceful, but...

It is hard to imagine when you meet Maasai women; usually they are shy and obedient, especially when together with their husbands. But they can get violently angry. If a man becomes the target for their anger it may be lethal...

Traditionally Maasai women’s revenge is reserved for men who have broken major taboos; men forcing their daughters to have sex or politicians challenging Maasai traditions, for instance female circumcision. When hearing about such cases Maasai women get together, search the man in his boma, and beat him with their belts. Reportedly men have died from their punishment. Not because of physical injuries, but because of the curse thereby cast upon them.

I just learned that women have started targeting men who are selling Maasai land also. That, I believe, is an important change. For decades Maasai moved when their land had been taken. They gathered their cattle and went somewhere else. Therefore, some men among the Maasai have been very generous towards people from other tribes looking for land to cultivate; the land did not really belong to anyone anyway. But now the Maasai are realising that they cannot keep on moving. There is no free land anymore. And they need the land themselves to grow crops and generate income. Especially the women are getting aware of this because they are often the ones responsible for feeding the kids and getting them to school.

Selling land has been a taboo for a while. But the Maasai are struggling to find out how to enforce it. They prefer to use their traditional councils of elders. But it is my impression that the respect for these institutions is decreasing. An inherent distrust of state institutions – and the inability of these institutions to deal with illegal land sales – renders the option of prosecuting perpetrators through state courts unviable. Now, it seems, some Maasai women have decided to take action.

I am not sure that taking the law into one’s own hands is the right solution. But maybe it is necessary until the services for registering rights to land and for enforcing land use planning are made available in rural areas?

Adopted by Maasais

I felt that I got adopted this week, when Maasais in Kimana village, Kiteto, gave me traditional jewelry, a blanket and a goat. I guess they were glad that someone was interested in their life and problems in the village. The photos below are from the ceremony. I felt honoured and chose not to think too much about whether it would be seen as me taking side in the conflicts between different segments of the population (but I hope not too many villagers will see these photos). 
 
  

EU aid and agricultural development

Underutilised land?

According to today’s Guardian the European Union now supports Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First), which is Tanzania’s president Kikwete’s plan for how the agricultural sector can contribute to economic growth in the country. The plan is a very long wish list of initiatives which should be initiated by state institutions to facilitate growth. I assume that all the prescribed initiatives are well intentioned and relevant.

One area which seems to be of particular importance in the plan is pillar number 5; land. In particular the issuance of titles is highlighted. Titles are thought to enhance growth because they can be used as collateral for loans, which can then be used for investments. The agenda has caused heated discussions among scholars. Personally I am more interested in whether it improves security of land ownership for the large majority of Tanzanians, who depends on access to land to farm.

Whereas the intended streamlining of land services may actually make it easier to acquire titles it does not necessarily make land more secure for the majority. That depends on the price of titles and on other government policies. Concerning the latter it may be worrying that “underutilised” land should be identified and allocated to a land bank for agricultural investment. Unless initiatives are targeted to improve the living conditions of the poor part of the population, it is not likely to benefit. For decades “land for investments” has been used as an excuse for evicting people from their land. Hopefully that will not be the case this time.

Back to the EU, I noticed that the EU Ambassador, who expressed his interest in supporting Kilimo Kwanza, highlights support to the road sector (!) and support to Tanzania’s national budget as examples, i.e. to sectors which the EU is supporting already. He does not bring new money. That is probably wise since it has recently been revealed that EU countries are not able to deliver the aid they have promised in 2010.

Always ask twice

Happy faces.

Yesterday I was reminded that if you want to get real insight into village life you may have to ask the same question several times. Beneath the surface of a harmonious community, conflicts are simmering.

At a meeting in the village in which I am currently working I had been allowed to pose a few questions to villagers about land issues. I realised, however, that only men had the courage to stand up in public and answer my questions. Therefore I asked for a separate meeting with the women.

I told the women that it was my impression that they did not have any problems with land because I had found out that women rarely appear in cases at the local land tribunals which have been set up to handle conflicts. A woman stood up and agreed; since women do not own land they do not have land conflicts. The logic was impeccable; since men are the owners of land, they are also the ones who have to deal with land conflicts. More so, because outsiders who come and grab the land, have been identified as the major land problem in this village. Therefore men go to court to defend their rights, also on behalf of the family. I almost accepted her explanation.

But to be sure that I had got it right I asked whether the fact that women do not own land could cause problems. It could be a problem, they agreed, but then it became “a question of the relationship between a wife and her husband”. 

By then I realised that the women, in case of divorce, saw disagreements over division of land as a conflict within the family rather than as a land conflict. When I asked how those family conflicts affected access to land, the stories were aplenty; women losing access to family land after a divorce; women losing land when the husbands die; etc. And the reason why women do not appear in the land tribunals is quite simple. Many women do not have the means to pay the fee (5000 shillings or less than 3 euro), to open a case. Especially Maasai women are in a bad situation because they, according to Maasai tradition, do not own cattle which they can sell to get money.

Not all women had these problems. I was also told that some men could be fair in case of a family breakup. But surprisingly many women had had to accept that they had lost access to their land. Pole sana, as they say in Kiswahili. I, for my part, was reminded that in order to understand land conflicts in the villages I should see them, not only as a question of conflicts and rights, but also as a question of social relations. Sometimes you have to know a part of the answer in order to pose the right question.
 

Tobacconists

Locally produced tobacco, Kiteto District, Tanzania.

Tobacco salt.

Pleasure.
 

What is wrong with Africa? (2)

Many (western) land rights scholars describe efforts in African countries to reform land administration systems with a great deal of cynicism; policies will not get implemented anyway, and if they do, they will only increase the confusion about what is law on the local level. They may be right that there is a great deal of confusion. But rarely do these scholars provide a real alternative to reform. Read an analysis of this academic tradition here. I have not come across any perfect solution either, but most people in the area I currently work in say that management of land is better now, after the reform, than it was just a few years back.

Most African countries inherited a dual system for managing land from the colonial authorities; one system providing titles for the cities and large-scale farm land, where white people were supposed to live, and one system for the indigenous population. In reality the latter was not one but many systems. The colonial authorities did not really bother to interfere in Africans’ land rights. Over the years, however, the systems got mixed up and there was a great deal of confusion, especially in rural areas, about whether state law or customary laws should prevail. This situation is called Legal Pluralism. Often the wealthy and powerful could take advantage and use the system from which they would benefit the most. For instance a man could use the traditional system to access land for free through the traditional system, but denying other people, especially women, their traditional rights to collect firewood or berries on the same land with reference to his ownership rights, now secured by the formal system. Slowly the complexity of coexistent tenure regimes became unbearable.

In Tanzania they started preparing their land reform after a surge of land conflicts in the 1980ies and early 1990ies. The new laws aimed at simplifying the systems. They were passed by parliament in 1999. Since then implementation has been frustratingly slow. But slowly you start seeing some results on the local level; villages start to manage land more correctly and tribunals and courts to handle conflicts are set up. Is this “random” implementation, as some scholars claim, or is it a sign that a more durable land management system is underway? I have not reached any conclusion yet. So far I leave both options open…

What is wrong with Africa?

Kibaya

A favourite topic for discussion among expats is “what is wrong with Africa?” Wherever they meet, in Tanzania or elsewhere, they will invariably end up discussing that question. Most have a pretty clear idea about what is wrong and what should be done.

What puzzles me is that when you talk to local people you often get a different account of the state of affairs.

Today I gave a guy a lift to his faraway village here in Kiteto, the district in which I am currently doing my research. He was fluent in English and an educated man. Since I know that his home area is very rural, I asked him how he had managed to get a university degree. He told me that as a kid he was lucky to be sent to boarding school in the nearest town, then to secondary school outside the district, and then he ended up at university in Dar es Salaam. He admitted that it was hard, as a kid, to be sent to town to go to school, with different food, different languages, and no family. But now, he said, every little village in the district has a school. Schooling is not a problem any more.

Many expats would focus on the low quality of teaching when talking about schools here. And there is no doubt that quality is a problem. But schooling is also an interesting account of progress; Kiteto got its first real school in 1949 and now every village has one. At least most kids now get a chance which kids did not get just a few years back.
 
If somebody has a very clear idea about what is wrong with Africa do not forget to look for other, more positive, accounts of what is going on here.